Art professor receives grants to support book

When did art collecting first boom in the United States? Leanne Zalewski, a Randolph College art professor, believes it happened earlier than many think, and she recently garnered two grants to support a book on the topic.

Her book, Before Impressionism: French Art in New York, 1867-1893, examines the history of postbellum art collections and what that history reveals about art and culture in New York and America as a whole, as well as how the increased interest in art collection changed the country.

Zalewski recently received a Diane and Trevor Morris Fellowship at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, to do research for her book, as well as a 2013 Mednick Fellowship Award from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges.

Astronomy and literature meet in English professor's upcoming talk

On a clear, cold night in 1847, a shy young Quakeress named Maria Mitchell peaked through a telescope on the bank of Nantucket, Massachusetts. When she discovered a comet that night, she made scientific history—and also sparked an international controversy.

“Her sex, science, and celebrity combined to make a powerful statement, a statement that made its way into the American cultural expression of her time,” writes Heidi Kunz, an English professor at Randolph College.

On Thursday, Kunz will give a talk about the way contemporary literature reacted to the discovery of Miss Mitchell’s Comet.

She will present “Miss Mitchell’s Comet and the Nineteenth Century American Novel” at 4 p.m. Feb. 16 in the Alice Ashley Jack Room in Smith Memorial Hall. The presentation is part of the Works in Progress Series sponsored by the Randolph College Chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Office of the Dean of the College.

While Kunz teaches courses in American literature and 18th century British literature, she also enjoys literary exploration of science, such as Mitchell’s scientific accomplishment that rocked common perceptions of gender roles in her time (and set her on course to be America’s first female professional astronomer). She also researches and writes extensively about F. Scott Fitzgerald, and was recently appointed to the editorial board of The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review.